trade secret litigation

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AQuate II, LLC v. Jessica Tedrick Myers and Kituwah Global Gov’t Group, LLC, is, as all parties put it, about “an archetypical trade secrets claim,” but with a couple of twists: sovereign immunity and an agreement to resolve disputes in a forum that allegedly does not exist.

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A recent complaint alleging trade secret misappropriation in the Eastern District of New York demonstrates the importance of combing an alleged trade secret misappropriator’s social media for subtle – and not-so-subtle – evidence of their wrongdoing.

The United States has charged Klaus Pflugbeil and Yilong Shao with conspiring to convey…

On November 1, 2023, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California awarded damages to Skye Orthobiologics, LLC (“Skye”) and Human Regenerative Technologies, LLC (“HRT”) for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of duty of loyalty by Skye’s former employee (“Defendant”). While Plaintiffs Skye and HRT did not succeed on their claim of trade secret misappropriation, they were able to succeed in showing Defendant misappropriated confidential information in breach of his employment agreements.

The 2016 enactment of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) has led to an increase in trade secret litigation. The DTSA codified into federal law the right of an owner of a trade secret to sue in federal court when its trade secret had been misappropriated. Prior to the DTSA, with the absence of diversity jurisdiction, aggrieved trade secret owners had to pursue legal remedies under state law, typically under the Uniform Trade Secret Act (“UTSA”), which has been enacted by 47 states. Notably, the DTSA does not preempt state trade secret laws, therefore, aggrieved trade secret holders may seek civil remedies for alleged misappropriation under either state or federal law or both. Both the DTSA and the UTSA requires the trade secret owner to take reasonable measures to keep the trade secret information secret. The term reasonable can have many meanings in different contexts depending on a multitude of factors. As such, what may be considered reasonable efforts under one set of facts may be deemed deficient under another set of facts.